IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/chosxx/v36y2021i9p1427-1445.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tenant selection in the private rental sector of Paris and Geneva

Author

Listed:
  • Francois Bonnet
  • Julie Pollard

Abstract

This article seeks to make sense of tenant selection in the private rental sector. It is based on 51 interviews with real estate agents in Paris (France) and Geneva (Switzerland). Tenant selection is a process whereby real-estate agents primarily assess whether prospective tenants can be a stable source of income for landlords. First, real estate agents use the income criterion as a category to organize the worthiness of a rental applicant. Our comparative design shows that financial risk assessment depends on particular institutional features of national tenancy regulations. Second, a “good tenant” is more than just a financially-solvent one. A good tenant pays rent regularly, stays in the apartment, maintains it in good condition, and does not cause any trouble. We show that real estate agents use many different categorical stereotypes related to these unobservable characteristics to dismiss applicants, just as employers on the low-wage labor market rely on stereotypes to identify soft skills of prospective employees.

Suggested Citation

  • Francois Bonnet & Julie Pollard, 2021. "Tenant selection in the private rental sector of Paris and Geneva," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(9), pages 1427-1445, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:36:y:2021:i:9:p:1427-1445
    DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2020.1769565
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02673037.2020.1769565
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/02673037.2020.1769565?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Weichselbaumer, Doris & Riess, Hermann, 2024. "Discrimination in the Austrian Rental Housing Market: The Effect of Information Concerning First and Second-Generation Immigrant Status," IZA Discussion Papers 17403, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:36:y:2021:i:9:p:1427-1445. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/chos20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.